Many attempts have been made to combine the benefits of storing digital media through Compact Disk (CD) or Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) technology with a banking or affinity card. Nevertheless, digital media, such as CDs or DVDs are required to have a thickness that is standard in the computer industry to allow the digital information to be read from the digital media. For example, a typical CD is approximately 1.2 millimeters (mm) in thickness.
In contrast, a typical credit card is approximately 30 mil (0.76 mm) in thickness, and this is the standard thickness for credit cards since it is desirable for credit cards to have a standard thickness that may be inserted into a credit card reader for reading information or data that is stored on a magnetic strip. Therefore, to date, it has been a challenge to provide a banking card that may be inserted into the corresponding machines for the reading of information from the bank card in a CD or DVD reader.
Along with issues of thickness, CD and DVD technology, which is optically read and written, can be hindered by scratches, abrasions, and other fouling of the clear material that encapsulates the data layer. Scratches can interfere with the reading from or writing to the data layer of the CD/DVD. Also, current CD/DVD technology is limited in the number of layers of data that can be read by a laser reader. Because the number of layers are limited, the data is usually spread out in a flat surface. Thus, although the density of data stored on a CD/DVD is high in terms of flat surface area, it is sometimes considered low in terms of volume.